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Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior Copyright 2013 © Kolenda Entertainment, LLC www.NickKolenda.com ISBN: 0615815650 ISBN-13: 9780615815657 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Table of Contents Acknowledgments Preface Introduction Step 1: Mold Their Perception Chapter 1: Prime Their Mindset Chapter 2: Anchor Their Perception Chapter 3: Convey High Expectations Step 2: Elicit Congruent Attitudes Chapter 4: Control Body Language Chapter 5: Create Behavioral Consistency Step 3: Trigger Social Pressure Chapter 6: Emphasize Social Norms Chapter 7: Reveal Any Similarities Step 4: Habituate Your Message Chapter 8: Use Repeated Exposures Chapter 9: Desensitize Negative Messages Step 5: Optimize Your Message Chapter 10: Alter Their Evaluation Chapter 11: Tweak Your Message Step 6: Drive Their Momentum Chapter 12: Provide Proper Incentives Chapter 13: Motivate Through Limitations Step 7: Sustain Their Compliance Chapter 14: Make Favorable Associations Putting It All Together References Acknowledgments Researchers are somewhat unlucky. Many work their butts off to expand our knowledge of human behavior, yet the majority of those researchers remain unknown and unrecognized. Though they’re under tremendous pressure to “publish or perish,” researchers are pressured to publish their work in top-level academic journals (journals that you’ll be hard-pressed to find in any mainstream household). In fact, researchers who publish their work in a book for the general public are sometimes viewed as a “sellout,” so it seems like many researchers are destined to remain unknown because of those unfortunate circumstances. Accordingly, I’d like to acknowledge all of the researchers who are helping to further our understanding of human behavior. In particular, I want to acknowledge the researchers whose work sparked my own interest in this pursuit: Robert Cialdini, Daniel Kahneman, Dan Ariely, John Bargh, Gavan Fitzsimons, Richard Petty, John Cacioppo, Leon Festinger, Ap Dijskterhuis, and the list goes on. Your work is truly revolutionary, and you deserve the utmost recognition and praise. Preface Let me guess. You skipped over the Acknowledgments and came directly to the Preface, right? Most people do. If you are among that majority, go back and read the Acknowledgments, and then come back here. Are you back? Great. My name is Nick Kolenda, and I’ve been a professional mind reader for 10 years. Do I have supernatural powers? Nope. Just a pretty good knack at reading people and influencing their thoughts. As a mind reader, I’ve structured my entire performance around the concept of psychological influence, and over the course of 10 years, I developed a unique method to unconsciously influence people’s thoughts. Where does the “mind reading” come into play? Because those people are unaware that I influenced their thoughts, I can reveal the thought that I implanted and, essentially, “read their mind.” I’ve always kept my method hidden, but this book finally reveals that explanation (and the psychology behind why it works). But this book stems far beyond that one mind reading application. Not only will Methods of Persuasion teach you how to influence people’s thoughts, but it will also teach you how to use psychology to control their behavior. In addition to my unique background as a mind reader, I also have an educational background in persuasion through my degrees in marketing and psychology. While in college, I became obsessed with finding the psychological forces that guide human behavior, and although most people can barely make it through one scholarly article, I sifted through hundreds—if not thousands—of academic journal articles, trying to pinpoint proven principles that guide our behavior. In my pursuit, I discovered several psychological forces that exert an incredibly powerful influence on our behavior. These principles are so pervasive and ingrained within us that they guide our behavior every day without our conscious awareness. More importantly, if you know how to alter those forces, you can use them to guide people’s behavior. This book will teach you those principles and more. Best wishes, Nick Kolenda October, 2013 Introduction Humans are marionettes. Attached to each of us are sets of strings that, when pulled in a certain direction, guide our behavior without our awareness. If you know how to control the strings, then you know how to control behavior. This book teaches you how to control those strings. This book will teach you how to successfully (and ethically) become a puppeteer in a world full of human marionettes. Because of my peculiar background as a mind reader and psychology researcher, the book that you’re holding is pretty unique. But there’s one particular distinction that makes it especially different from other books on persuasion. Most persuasion books simply list an arsenal of tactics that you can use at your disposal; however, the persuasion methods in this book have been strategically arranged into a chronological seven-step process. If you need to persuade someone to perform a specific task, you can follow the exact steps described in this book to achieve your goal. Although you can still pick and choose the persuasion tactics that you want to implement, this step-by-step guide will get you headed in the right direction. Conveniently, this step-by-step persuasion process follows the acronym METHODS (do you get the book title’s double entendre?). The overall steps in METHODS include: Step 1: Mold Their Perception Step 2: Elicit Congruent Attitudes Step 3: Trigger Social Pressure Step 4: Habituate Your Message Step 5: Optimize Your Message Step 6: Drive Their Momentum Step 7: Sustain Their Compliance It might seem like a simple list, but the amount of psychology literature that I scoured to produce that list is mind-numbing (feel free to take a gander at the list of references at the end of the book). Part of my goal in writing this book was to make it the book in your collection with the most highlighting. You won’t find any long-winded explanations, irrelevant anecdotes, or any other type of “fluff” because I’ve tried to make everything as direct and straight to the point as possible (while still making the book interesting and engaging to read). Last-Minute Background Info. Before jumping straight to the first step in METHODS, there’s some last-minute background information that can help you gain the most from reading this book. Persuasion Is Not Manipulation. The term “manipulation” generally refers to a malicious attempt to influence another person through questionable or blatantly unethical tactics (e.g., lying and deceit). The term “persuasion” is sometimes grouped with “manipulation,” which is very unfortunate because the two terms represent very different ideas. The tactics in this book are neither ethical nor unethical; how you use these tactics will determine that outcome. Although it’s not my job to “persuade” you to adopt a moral outlook, I wholeheartedly oppose anyone who tries to use these tactics to manipulate people. The principles in this book can be very powerful, and I urge everyone to use them with proper care and concern for other people. You should never try to persuade people to perform actions if you know that those actions are not in their best interest. Definitions. In this book, I’ll use the term “target” when referring to the person(s) that you’re trying to persuade. For example, if you’re trying to persuade a coworker to write you a recommendation, your coworker would be your “target” (you should also note that I will randomly alternate between using “he” and “she” pronouns when referring to a hypothetical person). I’ll also use the term “request” when you’re trying to persuade someone to perform a specific behavior (e.g., to write a recommendation), and I’ll use the term “message” when referring to the medium that you use for persuasion (e.g., an e-mail to your coworker). But both terms will be used more or less interchangeably. Lastly, most of the techniques in this book exert a “nonconscious” influence, meaning that people will be unaware that those principles are guiding their behavior. In writing this book, I chose to use the word “nonconscious” because the terms “subconscious” and “unconscious” have a connotation that there’s some part of our brain responsible for unconscious processes (which isn’t the case). The term “nonconscious” seems more accurate because it makes no such claim; it just refers to everything that occurs outside of our awareness. Structure of Chapters. The book is divided into seven parts, with each part representing a step in the METHODS process. Each of those seven parts will contain several chapters that explain a relevant psychological principle that you can use to accomplish the overarching step. Every chapter in this book shares a similar structure. I’ll first describe the background of the principle and how it exerts its influence in our daily lives. Next, I’ll describe the psychology research to explain why that principle is so powerful. Lastly, each chapter will end with various example strategies to apply that principle toward persuasion. If I’m so committed to being clear and concise, why am I bothering to teach the underlying psychology? Why not focus solely on the applications? There are two main reasons. First, by citing the research to support the principle, I’m hoping that you can gain an appreciation for the effectiveness of each application. Second, and more importantly, in order to take full advantage of the how, you need to understand the why. Once you understand the underlying psychology, you can start to move beyond the example techniques that I describe, and you can start to brainstorm your own persuasion applications and strategies. It’s like the Chinese proverb: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. STEP 1 Mold Their Perception OVERVIEW: MOLD THEIR PERCEPTION Reality is objective, but our perception of reality is subjective. What the heck does that mean? Even though there’s only one reality surrounding us, people perceive and interpret that reality differently. Essentially, our perception is a lens through which we interpret reality; if you know how to alter that lens, you can change how people view and interpret reality. That notion leads to the most common error in persuasion. When people need to persuade someone to comply with a request, they usually jump straight to the request without devoting attention to possible strategies leading up to that request. People start relentlessly hammering away, trying to extract their target’s compliance, unbeknownst to them that they could have used a few psychological tactics to change how their target would perceive their request. Accordingly, the chapters in this first step will teach you how to alter the lens through which people perceive the world around them, and you’ll learn how to mold their perception so that it becomes more conducive to your situation. Once you alter that lens, any additional persuasion tactics will become much more powerful and effective because of their new perception. The first chapter starts by describing one of the most important factors that dictates our perception: our current mindset. CHAPTER 1 Prime Their Mindset It might seem like an odd request, but think of a lucky dwarf. Are you thinking of one? Good. Now go with your immediate gut reaction and think of a number between one and ten. Quick! Stick with the first number that pops inside your head, and don’t change your mind. Are you thinking of a number? Although it’s far from foolproof, you were more likely to think of the number seven. And if you are thinking of seven and you’re somewhat freaked out, rest assured, this chapter will explain the psychological principle behind that phenomenon. Specifically, you’ll learn why imagining that “lucky dwarf” made you more likely to think of the number seven, and you’ll learn practical techniques to apply that underlying principle in your own life (don’t worry, you won’t be asking people to think about dwarves, I promise). THE POWER OF MINDSETS Before I explain the exercise with the dwarf, let’s try something else. This time, think of your mother. Let that image of good ol’ mum simmer for a second or two, and then let it fade away. Now, read the following blurb about Mark and mentally rate his level of motivation on a scale from one to nine (1 = low motivation, 9 = high motivation): Mark is just entering his second year of college. In his first year, he did very well in some classes but not as well in others. Although he missed some morning classes, overall he had very good attendance. His parents are both doctors, and he is registered in pre-med, but he hasn’t really decided if that is what he wants to do. (Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003, p. 153) Do you have your rating? As you might have judged, all of the information about Mark in that passage was completely ambiguous; in other words, that information could be perceived either positively or negatively. Researchers presented that ambiguous blurb to people to examine how their perception of Mark would change depending on their mindset. To instill a certain mindset in their participants, the researchers asked people beforehand to complete an “unrelated” questionnaire. Some people completed a questionnaire about their best friend, whereas other people completed a questionnaire about their mother. Do you still remember the rating that you gave Mark? The people in the study who filled out the best friend questionnaire gave an average rating of 5.56 for Mark’s level of motivation. Was your rating higher? According to the results, people who filled out the questionnaire about their mother viewed Mark to be significantly more motivated (Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003). Why did people perceive Mark differently depending on the questionnaire? Since nothing in the blurb changed, logic suggests that both groups should have given Mark the same rating. What was so powerful about the mother questionnaire that altered people’s perception of him? In general, people associate motivation and striving toward success more with their mothers than with their best friends. Because one of the driving forces behind many people’s pursuit toward success is a desire to make their mom proud, the concept of motivation became activated and more prevalent for people who completed the questionnaire about their mother. Although the objective reality in front of them remained the same (i.e., the blurb was the same for each group), the idea of “mother” became a lens through which people perceived that ambiguous blurb. The next section will explain why that’s the case, and you’ll also learn why a “lucky dwarf” can make people predisposed to think of the number seven. WHY ARE MINDSETS SO POWERFUL? To understand why mindsets are so powerful, you need to understand three concepts: schemas, priming, and spreading activation. Schemas. For any general concept, you usually associate many other ideas with that concept. For example, your concept of mother would include the idea of motivation, along with many other ideas that you associate with your mother. Further, if that set of associations—known as a schema—becomes activated, it can alter your perception and behavior because it would make the other associated concepts more prevalent in your mind (e.g., activating a schema of mother made the idea of motivation more prevalent, which influenced people’s perception of Mark). Though schemas can often result in positive perceptions, such as perceived motivation, schemas can also result in negative perceptions, such as stereotypes. For example, under your schema of “Asian” is probably the idea of superior math skills. Even if you don’t believe that Asians are genuinely superior at math, the mere presence of that association is enough to influence your perception and behavior. Researchers from Harvard conducted a clever study to test that claim (Shih, Pittinsky, & Ambady, 1999). Their study was particularly clever because they used a group of people who belonged to conflicting stereotypes: Asian-American women. On one hand, there’s a common stereotype that Asians are superior at math, but on the other hand, there’s a common stereotype that females are inferior at math. The researchers wanted to examine how activating those conflicting schemas could influence their performance on a math test. Before giving the test, the researchers asked two groups of Asian-American women some questions. Some women were asked questions that related to their sex (e.g., if the floors in their dorms were either co-ed or single sex). Other women, however, were asked questions that related to their race and heritage (e.g., the languages that they knew or spoke at home). Thus, one group had their schema of “female” activated, whereas the other group had their schema of “Asian” activated. You can probably guess what happened when the researchers later presented those groups with a supposedly unrelated math test. Women who were primed with their schema for Asian performed significantly better than a control group (women who were asked neutral questions), and women who were primed with their schema for female performed significantly worse than the control group. Therefore, any idea that we associate with a particular schema—even if we don’t believe in that association—can still influence our perception and behavior if that schema becomes activated. But how does a schema become activated in the first place? The answer lies in priming. Priming. Priming is the means by which you activate a schema or mindset. In the previous study about stereotypes, the “prime” was the questionnaire. When people filled out the questionnaire, their schema for either Asian or female became activated. Does that mean you need to ask people to complete a questionnaire in order to prime a schema? Nope. Luckily, there are many easier ways to prime particular schemas (though I suppose you could ask your target to fill out a questionnaire if you really wanted to). If not by questionnaire, how else can you prime a schema? Research shows that you can prime a schema by merely exposing people to certain words or